Night Shopping, a song by Noah Siela

Lyrics:

Night Shopping

Best thing that happened to mom
Was Hy-Vee opening all night long
So she could use food stamps without shame
Pull me from midnight bed
To go buy day-old bread
And ponder chuck roast in cellophane

Alone and holy shelves at night
Parking lot 1/19^th full
Toasted Oats under fluorescent light
Night aisles treated us well

They looked like legal tender
No e pluribus and no fed reserve number
And more brown than green in the check out guy’s hand
No local eyes on mom in the night
She’d push her cart into free into line
And unload generics and a few name brands

Alone and holy shelves at night
Parking lot 1/19^th full
Toasted Oats under fluorescent light
Night aisles treated us well

Our trunk-heavy Chevy the way back home
Would put high beams on top of our corn
That’d be embargoed tail end of The Cold War
The steady cherry from mom’s Old Gold
Was infallible on those dark gravel roads
That let us be alone in order to endure

Alone and holy shelves at night
Parking lot 1/19^th full
Toasted Oats under fluorescent light
Night aisles treated us well